There'll be nothing like this radical Dame, says Roddick

By Nicola Woolcock

12:01AM BST 14 Jun 2003

It may not be the most conventional location for a Dame of the British Empire to discover she has been honoured, but Anita Roddick was in "the belly of a Louisiana jail" campaigning for two prisoners when news reached her yesterday.

The Body Shop founder, an energetic human rights and environmental campaigner, said the honour would inspire her to greater things. Dame Anita, 60, plans to head her official website with the phrase: There's Nothing Like A Dame.

"It's fantastic to be recognised by your peers and given such an honour," she said. "I hope it will push me to be even more radical.

"Women in their advancing years are unstoppable and as they become older, they are more radical. The honour will mean nothing unless it pushes me on."

Dame Anita was appointed an OBE in 1988 and owes her latest honour to her services to retailing, the environment and charity. In 1976 she founded the Body Shop, which sells "green" cosmetics at around 1,600 shops worldwide.

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She was told about her appointment by her husband while in Louisiana to campaign on behalf of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, who were civil rights activists in the early 1970s. They were convicted of stabbing a prison guard to death in 1972 and have each spent around 25 years in solitary confinement.

Bill Morris, 64, the outgoing Transport and General Workers' Union general secretary, gave a typically self-deprecating response to the news of his knighthood.

He refused to take time off to celebrate and said the honour was for the causes he had championed, including giving a voice to refugees. Born in Jamaica, he emigrated to Britain in 1954.